


Photosynthesis // (under your spell)

by LyricalRiot



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A wild plot appeared, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Ben Solo Practices Sex Magic, Consensual Sex, F/M, It was just supposed to be smut, Jedi Are Wizards, Loss of Virginity, Magic, Oral Sex, Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy, Sex Magic, Smut, Sorcerers, This Smut Got Soft, Vaginal Fingering, Virgin Rey (Star Wars), Warlocks, Witches, Wizards, p in v
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:46:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24028357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricalRiot/pseuds/LyricalRiot
Summary: Rey is apprentice to the strictly celibate, emotionally disciplined, old school wizard Luke. While attending a midsummer festival with him, she meets a mysterious sorcerer named Kylo who offers to show her the true power that she has inside her through the rituals of sex magic.Based on a #ReyloPrompt.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 80
Kudos: 513
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be 5k of filthy cracky smut, but it got plotty and storied, and now maybe it'll turn into something longer? I don't know. Smut with plot. Or plot with smut, I guess.
> 
> Anyway, I had a ton of fun with it, hopefully you enjoy it too.

This is Rey's second Midsummer Festival.

Her second year heeling after an implacable famous wizard who wants to enjoy exactly _none_ of the dazzling revelries.

"Indulgence is not for you," he reminds her curtly as they make their way towards the brilliant indigo tent advertising the talents of a lesser soothsayer.

Rey _tries_ to temper her emotions, like a good scholar of magical arts should, but it's exceptionally difficult with all the merriment happening around her. Merchants and entertainers have flocked to this small village and its wide open festival grounds for the annual celebration. The inns are full. The residents with extra rooms have rented them to travelers. Those who don't stay in the village pitch their tents in the fields outside it. Throngs of people from all over the kingdom come to celebrate. Music plays, people dance, sellers hock their wares, children scamper, and best of all, food sizzles over an array of cook fires.

Rey longs to indulge in _all of it_.

She'd never been able to afford the trip before. Hell, she'd never even been able to afford the _dream_ of the trip before. But she came last year for the first time on the dime of her master, and now she's back again, thirsting after all the things she isn't allowed to want.

Instead, she traipses along behind the old man in his long robes and short unkempt beard and his walking staff. She carries one too — the visual hallmark of every adherent to the order of wizards. While Luke uses his to channel his magical workings, like all staffs are for, Rey has discovered... _other_ uses for her own. She rarely channels spellwork through it, instead taking out more than a couple opportunists who have thought to take advantage of a young woman wandering around less reputable parts of town on some errand for her master. Luke doesn't know she does this. It never occurs to her to tell him.

At the indigo tent, the tiny soothsayer woman with a face so ancient and lined Rey honestly wonders if she's the oldest person in the world looks up at them from the plush armchair she's set at a table outside her tent. Her non-existent eyebrows arch right up into the wrap she wears over her head.

"You're almost late, Skywalker," she tells him. "Everyone else is already assembled."

Luke is unruffled. He gives her a nod. "Then they're early. I've arrived when I meant to, Maz."

The tiny woman sniffs and gives him a flippant wave.

Luke turns to Rey. "Wait and watch."

She nods and waits until he turns away, entering the tent, before she expels a soft sigh, remembering how boring this was last year. It's going to be a couple hours until he emerges. The Counsel of Mages meets once a year at the festival, and Luke, being the preeminent wizard of the realm, is required to participate. But his apprentice is not allowed. Neither is she allowed to have any fun here, however much it calls to her.

Maz gives her a shrewd look. "You are restless, child. Does the way of the wizard not suit you?"

Last year, Maz had a steady stream of customers wanting their fortunes told. She'd paid Rey no mind. It surprises her to be addressed now.

She shakes her head. "I am grateful for the path I am on, and for Master Skywalker's instruction."

Maz's eyes sparkle. "You see enough people, you recognize when someone is trying to be someone they aren't. Skywalker's path is wrong for you. There is a greater power in you yet, waiting to be unlocked. You won't find it with him."

Rey frowns, disconcerted by how the woman looks at her. Like she knows a secret. Rey doesn't like that. She didn't ask for a fortune teller's reading. "With all due respect, fortune teller, you don't know anything about me."

That seems to amuse her, because Maz hoots and throws a look over her shoulder. "What do you think, Kylo? Does this child belong on the rigid, narrow road of the wizard?"

Rey practically jumps out of her skin as a shadow lurking near the next tent over — a troop of goblin miners advertising the latest crystals they'd pulled out of the belly of the mountain — steps forward and materializes into a man. A fucking _huge_ man, tall and broad and shrouded in fashionable clothes as dark as the wavy curls that brush his shoulders.

He glances at Rey only briefly before turning his attention down to the tiny, shriveled old woman sitting in her ornate chair.

"I shouldn't be surprised you knew I was there," he says — and his _voice_. Rey shivers. Somewhere in those rich, deep baritone sounds lurks something dangerously seductive.

Maz reaches out and takes his hand, giving it a pat. "And yet you are. Tell me, Kylo, did you see her?"

"I did."

"And will you speak to her after all this time?"

"You tell me, since you see so much." His gaze lifts from the old woman and settles on Rey again, vague interest in his strangely compelling face. "You're Skywalker's apprentice."

"And you're a — a sorcerer," Rey says, and she doesn't know if it is a trace of fear or a thrill that makes her voice waver like that.

Sorcerers are _not_ like wizards. Luke has told her as much a few times. He's also told her to stay far away from them. They don't hone their ability through study and discipline. They operate on _feeling_ and _instinct_ and some highly questionable rituals he doesn't want her to know anything about. Except, Rey wants to know. Because she is desperately curious, and if he tells her there is something she isn't allowed to see, she has to look. It is a flaw, she knows, but no amount of admonishing from him has diminished her insatiable curiosity over these last two years.

Sorcerers are...uncommon. Not quite rare, but she has still never met one in person before. She recognizes him for the style of his clothes, the long cloak his biggest tell, and his lack of symbols. Wizards, witches, and warlocks always wear symbols of their order. Sorcerers do not.

The man, Kylo, smirks. "I am. Does that frighten you?"

"No," Rey says, and she wonders if she believes it. Luke said sorcerers were beguilers, not to be trusted. This one certainly has the face for it. A beautiful face. A face she wants to know more about. "How did you know who I was?"

"He's been standing over there for quite some time," Maz says smoothly. "He watched you arrive."

Kylo barely flicks her a glance before he is peering at Rey with open interest now. Like he's found some unusual specimen. "I'd know who you were even if I hadn't. You've got a bit of a reputation, little witch. Didn't you know?"

His voice trickles into her blood like the slow spread of a drug. She can feel it, and bristles because how _dare_ he try to use magic on her. That's bad form, a breach of etiquette. Mages don't enchant one another unless they are on opposite sides of a political conflict.

"Don't use your magic on me," she snaps. "I'm not _little_ , and I'm not some simple-minded village daughter to be seduced for your amusement."

The corner of his mouth twitches. "No, I suspect you're not. My apologies. It was unintentional, I assure you." He doesn't really sound all that sorry. "What is it that they call you?"

Two years of unyielding discipline almost unravel in an instant when she opens her mouth to give him her name — her _real_ name. But she catches herself just in time and manages to give him her witch name instead, "Kira. But you didn't know that already? I thought you said I had a reputation."

"Hm, you do. But unfortunately the rumors only ever slate you as Skywalker's apprentice. It's so unusual for him to take one, after all."

"So they all tell me," she replies.

At least she no longer feels threads of him reaching curiously into her, trying to discover her secrets. She glances at Maz, who seems highly entertained by the exchange. Rey is unsettled. She would probably have walked away at this point, but Luke instructed that she stay. She always tries to follow his instructions, even if she turns out to be extraordinarily bad at it. Like swallowing her emotions.

"You're too old to be a traditional apprentice," Kylo decides. "Children with magic are identified early. But I heard that they brought you to Skywalker in chains for thievery only a couple years ago. You'd have been imprisoned if he didn't get first claim to any who manifested magic in his city."

"Thank you for this trip down memory lane." Rey rolls her eyes. She knows exactly how Luke had found her. "I'd almost forgotten."

"What took them so long to find you?" He still sounds so interested, completely unruffled by her sarcasm. She thought sorcerers weren't the studious type, but this man, a little older than her but not by much, sounds very much like a scholar hunting through texts for some discovery.

"Maybe a girl who has to steal to survive is also good at hiding," Maz supplies.

Rey presses her lips together and says nothing at that.

Kylo smirks again. "You carry your emotions on your sleeve, Kira. Skywalker must be daily exasperated by you."

Merlin, how does he manage to annoy her with such swift ease? Of course Luke is exasperated by her. No one has ever taught her to reel in her feelings, to temper her mind. She'd survived by raging against death, ever at nipping her heels, and by relying on her emotions to fuel her. Learning how to mute them now is the hardest part about learning magic. Not the spellwork itself. That comes rather easily.

"Are all sorcerers this charming?" she says dryly.

"His rules don't have to restrict you, you know." Kylo sidesteps her sarcasm once more. "If they chafe, they aren't meant for you."

"How would you know anything about his rules? You live by none at all."

That amused look returns. "Oh. I see he's filled your head with warnings against my order."

"He's told me enough."

"Do you know who is in there with him, right now?" He motions at the tent.

She hesitates. "The mage counsel."

"Right. Including Tano, the preeminent sorcerer. She is invited to represent us, afforded the same respect as your master and his order. Would that be the case if my kind were truly so terrible as Skywalker has made you believe? Indulge me another question, little Kira: who is the High Mage?"

"Organa," says Rey, even though she doesn't like being quizzed like this. Luke has told her about the witch called Organa, the most powerful master of the mystic arts in the entire kingdom.

"Did Skywalker tell you which order she pertains to?"

At that, she frowns. Luke hadn't. He only ever calls her the High Mage, and _mage_ is an umbrella term for any person who dabbles in magic. Even a lesser fortune teller like Maz is covered under that descriptor.

Kylo sees the answer plain enough, despite her silence. "Organa doesn't pertain to one single order. She practices them all. Including sorcery."

That…doesn't seem right. Luke always talks about how primitive and blasphemous sorcery is, how it leads its practitioners into dark and evil arts.

Maz hums thoughtfully, keeping herself in the conversation. "Every school of magic derives its source from a different place. No source is inherently evil. It is only the wielder who bends it towards the light or the dark. The High Mage knows that there is value in differences."

Warlocks get their power from gods, Rey knows. Wizards and witches get their power from learning. From the knowledge of those who came before. Rey has poured over enough books over the last two years to have a cursory understanding of the basic spells and cantrips of traditional witchcraft and wizardcraft.

"Where does sorcery get its power?" she asks, looking at Maz because she doesn't want to give Kylo the satisfaction of being too interested.

Maz smiles this funny little smile. "Within. Sorcerers _are_ the source. Their magic is personal. Tied to the bond between body and soul."

Kylo's eyes, those two dark coals unmistakably smoldering with some inner flame, slide over all of her, unabashed to be caught raking over her every feature. "They say you are quite powerful. That the spells you've worked in public alongside Skywalker have been unusually impressive for an apprentice."

She does _not_ want to feel that little flutter of pride at the way he said those words. But it is there anyway. "So?"

"How do you know his path isn't holding you back?" he asks smoothly. "You're following behind mages who came before, emulating them. What do you think you'd find if you unlocked your own power instead?"

It is an uncomfortable question. Rey has never admitted to anyone that the first time Luke told her about sorcerers, she'd been restless for days. Knowing that there were others out there who could use magic on their own terms, who could feel every feeling and follow every instinct the way she'd always done, it made it much harder to endure his lessons on having a clear mind and a governed heart. She'd ached to be _free_.

But then some mad wizard had come rolling into town and Luke took her out to confront him, and she'd been so exhilarated seeing what she could do with the magic she had already learned, she forgot all about her grievances and tried harder to be a better student after that. Luke's way is perhaps old fashioned, but it _does_ work, and she is grateful to him for teaching her. She could have been in prison or dead if he hadn't seen some potential in her.

"How does one _unlock_ their inner power?" she finally asks him after a minute of silence.

"It requires a release," Kylo says, and there's something suspicious about the way he says it. "A brief separation between soul and body so that your magic can be set loose."

Separation?

"Like death?" Rey says in sudden alarm. She knows there are death cultists out there who use blood sacrifices in their magic, but Luke says they are called _sith_ , not sorcerers, and they mostly live on an isle across the sea.

Maz chuckles. "A little death, of sorts."

Kylo glances at the old woman. "Not death. Enlightenment."

"It still sounds like you're trying to avoid saying you need to kill me and bring me back to life," Rey observes with bemusement.

"No," says Kylo.

Maz's chuckle becomes a delighted cackle. "He'll keep denying it, but you're right, even when you're wrong. It's sex, child. Sorcerers fuel their magic through sex."

Rey reels backwards, her eyes widening into saucers. Luke hadn't said _anything_ about…about _that_. Questionable rituals, he said. The only time he's ever mentioned sex to her was merely to tell her once that the wizarding path is a celibate path, and that all sexual practices are forbidden as forms of attachment. Attachment leads to suffering, which leads to darkness.

Kylo watches her, measuring her reaction. Rey stares at him, expecting him to deny it, to say Maz is only teasing her, but he doesn't.

"That's how you —" she stammers, "you mean _you_ did that to…to find your own power?"

"I did." He speaks calmly. "I was once on the same road you are. I was a wizard's apprentice. I too was more powerful than what that road could offer. It restricted me, as it restricts you. But fate found me and showed me my true potential. I met a sorceress who taught me how to access my _own_ strength, instead of relying on predecessors."

"Is that all a very fancy way of saying she bedded you?"

He smirks. "I suppose."

"I remember Ventress," Maz sighs. "She's been gone a long time, hasn't she? Years now. I wonder where she went."

Kylo cuts her a glance. "Can't you see where? I thought you had the gift of sight."

"Not _all_ sight, petulant boy," she says, prickling. "But if you sit here in my chair, I'll tell you what I see for _you_." Her big eyes flick to Rey, and she smiles a little. "Or you, dear."

Rey shakes her head. "No."

Kylo hums. "Not for me either, Maz. I shouldn't be here when they get done."

"Why not? She'd want to see you."

"This isn't exactly the place for that. And with him here, it would make a scene."

So cryptic. Rey is still sort of reeling. She doesn't understand how they can casually go from talking about _sex magic_ to discussing whatever people Kylo wanted to avoid here without batting an eye.

"He might rein himself in with his apprentice here to witness," Maz says with a mild smile.

Kylo laughs a soft, sardonic laugh. "If he even knew I'd been talking to her, he'd set a dozen different incurable curses on me in ten seconds flat."

Rey's eyes narrow. There's only one apprentice here. "Are you talking about Master Skywalker?"

"He's not a big fan of mine," Kylo tells her.

"Can't imagine why." Luke probably objects to everything Kylo is, having abandoned his disciplined path in favor of something more…carnal.

Kylo smirks. "Perhaps you still need more time to see how he's holding you back. When you're ready to do more with your magic, come and find me."

"Yeah, I'm sure your motives are purely professional," she sneers.

He chuckles, soft and low in a way that sends heat flooding through her. "Who says they are?"

Before she can formulate a reply, he turns and saunters off. She watches him dissolve into shadow right before her eyes. She gapes.

There has only been one other time in her life when she's seen someone become shadowy smoke and vanish like that. Two years ago. Even as she'd caught hold of someone's coin purse with light fingers and was about to cleanly, deftly slice it away from their belt without them ever catching her, she saw someone out of the corner of her eye and turned to witness a body go up in smoke just like that. She'd been so flabbergasted, she didn't even realize she'd been caught until the city watch had their greaves on her, bearing her away before the magistrate as a thief.

Maz laughed. "He can do a lot more than that, child. And so could you, if you'll take a leap of faith."

Rey throws her a wild look. "You're honestly suggesting I _sleep with him_ because it might give me extra magical ability?"

"No," says the old woman. "Because it might show you who you really are."

Forget Luke's mandate. Rey has to get out of there. With only an irritated, half-muttered excuse about needing to eat, she turns and stumbles away, off towards the cook fires. She knows who she is. She doesn't need a compelling stranger and his talk of depraved sexual revelations to tell her what she already knows.

* * *

Luke finds her some time later. She isn't sure how long.

"Kira," he intones with that damned annoying patience of his, "I told you to wait by the tent."

"I got hungry," she says testily, working on a skewer of salted pork sausage.

"Your physical needs can wait. You must learn to deny your body for the purification of your mind. You wouldn't have starved to death waiting another hour."

"What good was it doing my mind to just stand there?" she shoots back, feeling particularly obstinate after the encounter with the fortune teller and the sorcerer. "You could have sent me on some errands. Potions to buy. Ingredients. Crystals. Anything."

"I know that idleness is harder for you," he says. "You're meant to confront your weaknesses, Rey, not indulge them. I give you challenges so that you can grow, not ease so you can remain complacent."

She sighs and gives him nothing in return. Luke orders some food and sits next to her. They eat in relative silence. Rey watches the jugglers and acrobats weave through the crowd, attracting spectators. She hears the bards singing their heroic ballads of monster-hunting adventurers. She watches the festival attendees play and laugh and drink, happiness glowing on their faces. Meanwhile her master sits there, stoic as ever.

Maybe it is the conversation with Kylo, maybe it is the growing discontent she's already been feeling for some time, but Rey asks softly, "You do _feel_ emotion, don't you, Master?"

Luke looks up from his food. "Of course I do. I just don't give them place. Emotions carry you into impulses and passions. Neither of those are useful to mastering the mystical arts."

"What about those who _do_ use them, and practice powerful magic all the same?"

Luke frowns. "Those practitioners skirt a dangerous line. It's easy to slip off the edge into darkness when you allow your judgement to be clouded by feeling."

Rey doesn't really know what to say to that. She wonders about Kylo. And about Maz too, for that matter, who seems to possess a strange nonchalance towards everything. The old woman is merely a soothsayer, not powerful enough to really be inducted into any order of magic, given exactly one supernatural gift and no other ability. But she seems to understand things on a deeper level anyway. And she's the one who said that this might not be the right path for Rey in the first place.

Luke sighs softly, his voice lowering to something gentle and sympathetic. "I know it isn't easy for you. But it is for the better, you know. Finding the discipline. Look at how far you've come with it already. The girl I took in was a wild, rebellious thief. Now you're a respectable member of society, no longer grasping at survival by the claws. You're doing well. I push you because I know you can do even better."

To this, Rey says nothing for a long time. He is right, of course. She is a little more.. _tame_ now. More socialized. But she still feels that something is missing.

 _It might show you who you really are_.

"Could you get me an audience with Organa?"

Luke blinks, startled by this request. "Apprentices don't get to ask for audiences with the High Mage, Kira."

Rey chews her lip. "I know. But I — I have this sense that she could help me find my balance. I know you are close to her. You've intimated as much before. Could you ask?"

Luke surprises her. His face softens and he nods. "I will ask tomorrow."


	2. Chapter 2

Rey waits by Maz's tent again the next day while Luke is in council. Maz has more customers than she'd had the day before, so she doesn't pay Rey much mind. Her clients want to know their futures. Rey listens to the old woman analyze each one, and suspects that not everyone is getting exactly what they pay for. "Some people don't have futures," Maz tells her offhandedly when she catches the side-eye Rey gives her after a particularly inauthentic reading, "but you can't just tell someone they're destined for death and ruin, can you?"

No, she supposes not. Rey bides her time by trying to remember the ingredients to the abjuration spells Luke had her run through last night, telling herself she is _not_ watching for Kylo, that she's _not_ half-hoping he'll show up. Even though, she definitely is doing both. She has more questions, though she isn't sure she'll have the courage to ask any of them if he does come back.

She spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to fall asleep last night with his strangely beautiful face bright in her mind and his deep voice heady and drug-like in her veins. She remembered the heat in his eyes when he explained how she might unlock her own inner power. She knows sorcerers are masters of seduction, but she's never understood how incredibly effective they are until now. She can't get him out of her thoughts. And even though she's successfully avoided any and all experience with sex, a curious, strongly scented wetness soaked her underclothes last night as she tried _not_ to think of him, and a kind of want ached throughout her lower extremities. She tells herself it was nonsense, just some residual feeling left from when he'd tried to surreptitiously use his magic on her. But she isn't sure.

Kylo doesn't show, so she doesn't get a chance to gather any further data about his effect on her.

When the council meeting finally ends, a handful of important mages file out of Maz's tent. Tano, the head of the sorcerer order, is of particular interest to Rey this morning. She's tall and beautiful with white tattoos marking the russet skin of her face. She doesn't seem at all evil. Her wide blue eyes meet Rey's briefly, but there's nothing but vague passing interest in them before she heads off again. Rey might have liked to put her questions to her, but apprentices didn't get to address other mages, especially heads of orders, without first being addressed.

Luke exits the tent last, waiting until everyone else has walked away before he turns to Rey. His expression is weary, almost reluctant.

"The High Mage has agreed to see you, Kira. Go on in. I'll wait out here."

She has? Rey sucks in a deep breath. She'd hoped, but not very confidently, that the High Mage would be just curious enough about why an apprentice wanted an audience to grant the request. But this whole morning she'd been telling herself it wouldn't happen, to ease the sting of disappointment. She's not really sure what to do with herself now that her request has been granted. Still, an unmistakable thrill runs through her at the prospect.

"Thank you, Master," she whispers, giving him a brief smile as she edges past him and goes inside.

The tent is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. In fact, it doesn't look like a tent at all, but an illusion. As soon as she walks in, the canvas sides drop away and now she's standing in a huge chamber with high walls, a glass ceiling, and massive windows overlooking some polished, manicured palace grounds. A huge round table fills the room with ornate chairs all around it.

A woman waits beside the table. A woman Rey does not recognize, because she's never met her before, but a woman she nonetheless knows the identity of.

Organa, the High Mage, the Witch Queen, the Priest Princess of Alderaan. She has many titles. She looks to be about as old as Luke, but much better put together. She is positively _regal_. Rey almost bows as soon as she sees her, even though mages don't bow to each other.

Organa comes forward with a soft smile. "Kira," she says warmly. "I'm pleased to finally meet you. I've heard a great deal about you from my brother."

Rey's eyes widen and she forgets the respectful greeting she'd rehearsed in her head. "Who is your brother?"

She laughs. "Luke."

It startles Rey to hear her master's true name almost as much as it startles her to learn that the two are _brother and sister_. True names hold too much power. Curses and other evil can be worked on a mage whose true name is known. Rey knows Luke's because she'd read it once trying to tidy his library. It had been scrawled in an old book. _Luke Skywalker_. He told her never to use it. And he knows hers because, of course, he'd been there when she was just Rey. She hopes Organa knows about all that, or else it is terribly bad form for her to have just dropped his name so casually like that.

"I know you already know it," she says with an enigmatic smile, like she saw Rey's thoughts. "And I know you will never use it."

Rey never will. She isn't the kind to put horrible curses on people like that.

"Master Organa," she says respectfully, "I'm grateful you were willing to meet with me. I won't take too much of your time. I just wanted to know…" here, she flounders. How to articulate exactly what she wants to know…?

"Maz told me you met Kylo yesterday," Organa supplies when Rey struggles.

She nods, grateful for the rescue. "I did."

"And he put doubts into your mind about the wizarding path." Organa doesn't phrase is like a question. She knows.

"Well, Maz did first. But Kylo agreed with her. And he said that you are a student of all paths, so I thought perhaps you could guide me, because I truly feel…like I'm trying to make myself fit into a space where I don't belong. With Luke, I mean. He's a good master, and he's working hard to make me into a better person, but…"

Organa observes her without a trace of judgement. "You aren't sure you want to be a better person."

Rey exhales. "Yes. My emotions are a mess, and trying to control them the way Luke admonishes me too feels...like caging birds meant to fly. I don't want to be still water like he is, with no real connection to others because _attachment_ is forbidden. I've never had attachments before. Part of me wonders what that would be like. Does that make sense? Am I foolish? I'm not trying to run from self-improvement because it's hard. I'm just trying to understand."

Organa considers her a moment, then motions for her to follow. They walk over to the windows on one side of the room. "Look," she says, pointing down to the garden.

Sitting on the edge of a fountain below is a man in traveler's clothes, talking to a _minotaur_ , of all things.

"Who is that?" Rey asks.

"My husband," says Organa smoothly.

Rey exhales softly in surprise, looking from the High Mage to the man and back again. Luke has always told her that _love_ is as forbidden as physical intimacy, and marriage is out of the question. But the veritable _queen of magic_ has just contradicted that notion with one answer. If she, the undisputed power of magical learning and ability in the realm, could so casually thwart that archaic rule, maybe it doesn't mean as much as Luke claims it does. Maybe none of his restrictions do.

"The wizarding path is our oldest path, the first foray mankind made into the mystical arts. It is an honorable calling. But it is _one_ path, Kira," Organa explains, once again anticipating her thoughts. "It is not the only. Nor is it necessarily the right path. The right approach to magic is the one that works for you. For me, I chose to take pieces of each discipline."

Rey peers at her, trying to understand.

Organa folds her hands together and speaks instructively. "From the wizards, I use emotional moderation and discipline to curb my otherwise hot temper. I also respect and consult the sacred texts for deep knowledge of the things that have been learned by others. From the warlocks, I use the supplication to the gods to ask for things beyond my control, and for assistance when my own abilities falter. From the bards, I use the mysterious language of music to heal or persuade, though it has taken me many years to find even a single instrument I can reasonably master. And from the sorcerers, I use the heat of _passion_ to nourish my _own_ magic, and to give my life meaning."

It's as if Organa has made the whole of magic her buffet, and she chooses which pieces to take for herself. Rey's mind is utterly boggled by the notion. Two years ago she thought magic was some unknowable thing only the rich got to learn. She didn't realize it was a connection that could spark in anyone until it fizzled to life in her. And Luke came along, and she thought the wizard way was _the_ way to learn magic. Even when she'd discovered different schools of practice, she thought they were all more or less offshoots of wizardry. But now Organa is telling her that magic isn't _one_ thing. That there isn't a single right approach.

"If you feel unable to grow further with Luke, gratefully take what he has given you, but find another teacher. There is no law that says you must stay and finish your tutelage with him."

To say Rey is astonished would be a grievous understatement. The High Mage is giving her permission to _leave her master?_

"You're saying it's alright for me to...use my emotions. To seek attachments?"

"I am, and I did. I have a husband. I have a son. Do you think my attachments make me weaker?"

No. No one could claim that the famed Organa is weak. She'd defeated legions of darkness through the strength of her power.

"However," the older woman adds, "the wizards are not wrong. Attachment _does_ lead to suffering. Having something you love means having something you fear to lose. It can bring joy, which is why I chose it, but if you choose to care about people, you must know that it will make you suffer."

Rey has been suffering her whole life, precisely because she has a lack of people who cared. She doesn't see a difference. Luke might be able to live a tranquil existence fearing the loss of nothing and no one, but Rey doesn't want that. She wants to care deeply and passionately. She knows how to suffer. Now she wants to know how to love.

Only one order fully embraces that kind of chaotic emotional acceptance.

"Forgive my prying, Master, but I have to ask, in your quest for learning and discovering your own power, did you... use the rituals of sorcery?" Rey says hesitantly, though it makes her face flame hot to do so.

A funny little smile teases over the older woman's face. "Yes, Kira, I did. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You're a powerful being who deserves to feel the pinnacle of human experience. Don't be embarrassed by what your body asks for. If, like Luke, you feel your truths are better served by abstinence, then abstain. If not, then I urge you to explore. Find what makes your blood quicken and your power surge."

Rey's heart skips a beat in her chest. It sounds like Organa is telling her it's okay to…find out what it's like, the sex magic of the sorcerers.

The High Mage watches her with a newly curious look. "Did Luke ever tell you what became of his first apprentice?"

"No," says Rey. "I know he had one, but he's never mentioned a name, or what happened."

"He was my son." Organa looks down into the garden again, bobbing her chin toward the man below in an indicative gesture. "His father has no gift for the mystical arts, gods bless him. Even still, my son was born with immense ability. Too much, really, for one so small. He trained with Luke for years, for as long as he could. Luke has never approved of my philosophies and he believed his unyielding methodology could help my son with his wild passions. I knew it would be prudent for him to learn those things anyway, so I allowed it. When my he grew older and began to resent his uncle, I knew it was time for him to journey down other roads. I asked the warlock gods to bring a new teacher into my son's life. They sent a sorceress named Ventress. She opened his eyes."

Tingles run down Rey's spine at the name of the sorceress. A name she heard yesterday. The name of one who lulled a young wizard apprentice away from his path. "Is…Kylo…?"

"Yes, Kylo is my son."

 _Merlin's beard_ , who else in Rey's acquaintance is secretly related to the High Mage? And is this who Maz and Kylo spoke of yesterday?

Organa laughs. "I see he didn't mention that. He's ashamed, I think. Kylo spent years after his awakening wandering down darker avenues of magic. He served a dark master called Snoke for a time. When Snoke began to dabble in the death cults, however, Kylo left. I always had faith he would find his own way in time, and he has. He thinks I condemn him for what he's done, but I don't. Someday, perhaps, he'll be brave enough to speak to me again and I will tell him. Just as you have to embrace suffering to know joy, I believe you have to become acquainted with shadow to walk in light. The things he's done don't diminish my love for him. And his father misses him too. If you see him again, will you tell him? I suspect he lacks the courage to come home."

Rey doesn't really think she _will_ see Kylo again, and she really doesn't know how she feels suddenly becoming this inter-family messenger. Still. If it's true, he really should go home. She can't imagine a more accepting mother. It gives her an unpleasant twist of rueful longing in her gut, seeing what Kylo could have, and Rey does not.

All that side, however, and back to the point, Organa has given her a great deal to think about. Decisions to make, perhaps.

"Luke will be disappointed if I follow his nephew to another road," Rey says after a long moment.

Organa shrugs. "He'll just have to stifle that emotion, won't he?"

The subtle barb makes Rey laugh. Only the High Mage could get away with saying something like that of the foremost wizard in the realm.

"You don't approve of his path anymore than he approves of yours."

The older woman chuckles. "Very good. I would expect a thief to be perceptive like that."

Rey senses the end of their conversation. She bites her lip once more, hesitating before she says, "Thank you for speaking to me. It's been enlightening."

"If what I've heard of you is true, Kira, then you may find your potential is best served by a wide and varied education, as mine has been. Don't let your powers squander unrealized."

* * *

Sleep once again comes only after great struggle that night. She keeps tossing and turning and thinking of the words the High Mage had said. By morning, she's pretty sure her time with Luke is over.

This is the third and final day of the festival. He has only a brief council meeting and then they will leave. Rey isn't sure what will happen now. She could go back with him and bide her time until another opportunity comes along, or she could find that opportunity and leave him now.

Not that she's told him any of this, of course. As far as he knows, her conversation with his sister went well and she had been full of advice.

He doesn't make Rey wait by the tent this time. He finally gives her license to go enjoy the festival as she wanted, as a reward for being patient and diligent yesterday. This overture of kindness helps her make up her mind. Because Rey doesn't want her freedom to be a _reward_. So she wanders. She stops to observe a dramatic performance by a troop of actors on a makeshift stage, but doesn't stay long. The plot eludes her. She has no idea what they're on about.

When she turns to leave, however, she runs directly into a huge stone wall of a chest and almost falls backwards until large hands catch her.

"Ah," Kylo says, setting her back on her feet. "There you are."

"I'm sorry," the starts to hastily apologize before she finally realizes it's _him,_ and then her words cut off with a little, "oh."

He's dressed much as he was the day before, only this time his rakish black clothes have little accents of green on them here and there. She loves green. His hair is even nicer than she remembers, full and soft and wavy, and his face is the exact same as it appears to her every time she tries to sleep. She refuses to blush, frowning instead.

"Didn't realize you were looking for me," she says with feigned terseness.

He smirks. "I wasn't. Not actively. But I did wonder if Skywalker had kept you away after all, lest you fall pray to too much _temptation._ "

Dammit, she does blush now. She can feel the heat of it in her cheeks. "No. He's had council meetings every day. Today he gave me leave to peruse the festival."

"How generous of him. Mind if I join you?"

She glances around, hesitating. "It won't be exciting. I'm just going to be poking around the merchants and eating."

He shrugs. "I'm not difficult to please."

"Somehow I doubt that," she decides. Still, Organa's advice is still loud in her mind and she thinks it might not be a terrible way to spend the late afternoon. So she doesn't tell him no.

They wander away from the actors, weaving through jugglers and mimes, and pause for a bit to listen to a particular bard sing about how a poor man tricked his way into wealth. Rey thinks it's rather good.

"He's casting," Kylo says, so soft and low in her ear it makes her jump. "See? He's seducing his audience into paying him more than he's worth."

Rey peers at the bard. She can see a faint glow trailing behind where his fingers meet the strings of his lute. Her eyes widen. "Sneaky bastard."

Kylo chuckles. "Money and sex, that's all that most bards use their abilities for."

Rey glances at him. "How is that much different than what sorcerers do?"

If this offends him, Kylo doesn't show it. His attention drifts over the heads of many of the spectators. "We aren't so crude as that. We offer our abilities as services, same as wizards and warlocks. We can tackle whatever troubles the common people."

"With sex magic," she says skeptically.

That seems to amuse him more, and his smirk grows into a grin. "No, Kira. I believe you'd find most of our magic rather boring. We certainly don't sleep with our patrons. Well, actually, I shouldn't say that. There are those unscrupulous practitioners who do, of course, but in general it's useless. Those particular rituals only work if the other participant is someone with whom you share a meaningful connection. That's why we don't hire prostitutes every time we want to cast a particularly powerful spell."

They turn away from the bard and keep going, pausing by an alchemist's booth to look at his tinctures and potions.

"Is that how you cast?" she asks, keeping her tone academic. "You have to…do that?"

"No. Mostly it's as humdrum as your witchcraft is, except without the rules against attachments. We use our emotions to fuel our workings. Every person casts a little differently, according to their own magic, but you'd recognize a lot of our methods. Throwing bones, burning candles, chanting incantations. It's all very pedestrian."

He pays for a bottle of Fever Breath and tucks it away in a pouch at his side. They move on.

"We don't use wands," he says as they pass a wand maker, and then knocks against her staff. "Or these. We just use our hands. We are excellent at using our hands."

Rey glances sharply at him, unsurprised to see the mischievous look lurking there on those full lips of his.

"So when does your sex magic actually come into play?" She smells the unmistakeable aroma of meat pies and veers sharply off their path.

He follows. "You're very preoccupied with that aspect of sorcerery."

"Skywalker always tells me I'm too curious about the wrong things."

A soft, derisive snort escapes him. "Skywalker's opinions of what is the wrong thing is usually wrong."

That makes her smile, just a little. "So? When do you use _those_ kinds of rituals?"

"When we wish to manifest. To bend the universe to our will. Chasing a sexual release can open windows of revelation in your mind, boost your own power. For those who are already awake to their abilities, you can achieve similar, though admittedly less powerful effects on your own. It's always more potent with a well-matched partner."

"Does the partner have to be a sorcerer too?" she asks, thinking of Kylo's very ordinary father.

"No."

They're at the pie seller's now. Rey quickly buys two for herself and a glass of ale. Kylo only gets an ale, following her over to a table. He sits across from her and watches as she attacks her food like it's the last she'll ever see. Old habits die hard.

"I imagine you didn't get a lot to eat growing up," he observes.

"Wouldn't have had to steal if I did," she tosses back.

He hums in acknowledgement.

The festival is swarmed with people from all walks of life. People in fancy elitist attire of dazzling colors, paladins and knights in glinting armor, peasants in their rags as happy as if they were silks, and travelers bearing the fashions of their native lands. But none of them are quite as compelling to Rey right now as the man who sits across from her. The son of the High Mage. A man who, by his own mother's admission, has seen some unsavory paths, yet found his way back. A man who knows what it's like to be Luke's apprentice, and to walk away.

"As it so happens," she says after a minute, focusing on the crust of her second pie rather than his face, "you and the fortune teller might have been right about me."

"Might have," he snorts. "We were."

She rolls her eyes. "Pains me as it does to feed your already inflamed ego, I've decided that in order to grow, I do need to leave your uncle."

"My uncle?" His smirk falls and he gives her a scrutinizing look. "You know. You didn't before. Did Skywalker tell you?"

"No. Your mother did."

Rey considers it a small victory, the way his face falls for a moment into unguarded surprise, and troubled longing. It's artfully concealed again a moment later and sarcasm colors his tone. "They let an apprentice get close to the mighty High Mage? I'm shocked."

"She said she isn't angry about anything you did," Rey says, even though this is probably way overstepping. "She's ready to see you again whenever you are."

Kylo is, for once, rendered speechless. He focuses on his ale instead of meeting her gaze. And he expeditiously changes the subject. "Where will you go when you leave Skywalker?"

"I've only been at this magic thing for two years. So I suppose I'll find someone willing to teach me something new. Maybe the warlocks. Your mother said some good things about their gods."

He makes a mocking sound, and then Kylo is back to himself, smirking at her with this look that goes straight through her like lightning. "Warlocks are more useless than wizards."

"Or," she says carefully, "I could learn more about sorcery."

There's a silence between them now. A pause gravid with suggestion. He leans forward over the table, pushing the remains of her food aside so there are no distractions left. It feels like the whole festival disappears, and it's just the two of them.

"I could teach you," he whispers, his singularly dark eyes half-hooded.

Rey's breath catches. The way he says it remind her of the glowing embers of a fire, soft and blazing with invisible heat.

His gaze roves over her face, taking her in with a kind of intensity that makes her stomach flutter. "You don't even know the power you possess," he rumbles. "Let me help you set it free."

She swallows, her heart tripping unsteadily inside her now. Is she really going to do this? Is she being impulsive? Beguiled by his sculpted face and hypnotic voice and the insatiable call of her own curiosity?

Luke is going to have a conniption when he discovers who she left him for, but what Kylo offers is too tempting. She has to see it through. She can feel the whispered promise of power right here before her fingertips. Waiting to be tasted.

She nods.

Kylo doesn't waste a moment, standing immediately and offering his hand.

Rey stares at it, affording herself one last doubt that this is a good idea. And then she takes it.


	3. Chapter 3

Kylo pulls her to her feet. They stare at each other for a tremulous moment, and then he starts off, keeping hold of her hand as he leads her through the crowd, away from the center of town, away from the crush of people.

Her stomach is a tangled mess of nerves. Even though she's certain of her decision, she still doesn't know how to anticipate what happens next. Do they go into a dark alley where he'll take her quickly and efficiently? Is it some elaborate ritual requiring candles and chants? How does it work?

She should probably ask him. But she can't exactly find a way to speak right now, so instead she follows, focusing on the warmth of his hand engulfing her own, wondering vaguely if all of him is scaled according to his hand size.

He takes her to the edge of town where those travelers who don't wish to stay at any of the inns have pitched their tents. Kylo goes directly to a particular, neutral-colored construction, sporting no flags or symbols or showy colors to broadcast heraldry or city affiliation. He could, she thinks. He could flaunt his connection to the High Mage, as both magical royalty and literal royalty, as his mother is the sole surviving heir to the lost kingdom of Alderaan. Advertising his lineage through his heraldic sigils could win him fame and fascination and all kinds of attention. But maybe Kylo doesn't want that. His tent is entirely plain, as ordinary as any she's seen.

Unlike an ordinary tent, however, it conceals an illusion much like Maz's. When he ushers her inside, it's deceptively spacious. At least his looks like a tent, not some palace chamber this time, but it's still enormous. A veritable workshop. He has a wall of potions and bottled ingredients, some she recognizes, some she doesn't, with bundled herbs hanging upside down to dry and jars of bones and trinkets hung from pegs on the shelves. He has a workbench currently awaiting him with a mortar and pestle half-filled with some crushed blue powder. There's a chest propped open with neatly folded clothes inside — most of them black, and she wonders if the sorcerer dress code requires black. The wizard dress code requires ornate robes. He's got a free-standing mirror beside the chest, which tells her he enjoys making himself look nice before going out. Not surprising, given his perfect hair.

He might be high maintenance. She supposes that'd be normal for him, given his upbringing. Rey is a gutter rat who thinks about function before aesthetic.

Curiously, Kylo does not have a bed in the tent, only a thick pile of furs on the ground in the center of the room. Rey hasn't slept on the floor in two years. Part of her wonders if it'll bother her to do it again. Another part of her knows she never slept on so much luxury, bed or floor. A third wonders if she's being wildly optimistic that sleep will even be part of what they do here at all, or if it'll be a swift execution of some penetrative ritual and then she'll be on her way, a belly full of him, a new slant to her magic to explore.

Kylo has let go of her hand while she looks around, taking the things he purchased to his shelf and placing them in deliberate spots. He tidies a few stray belongings. When he seems satisfied, he turns and brushes past her, back to the door of the tent. He fastens the buttons and mutters some enchantment under his breath. Rey can see the fabric stitching itself together until there is no door at all.

"It's real on the outside," he explains, "so no one can come in. But it's an illusion on our side." He pushes against the flap, and it opens. "You can leave any time you want. I'm not locking you in here."

She nods, reassured.

He unfastens his cloak cloak and hangs it on a rack, followed by his overcoat. He unbuttons and rolls up the sleeves of his black shirt, walking slowly the length of the tent with his palms out, muttering another enchantment.

"What's that one for?" Rey asks when he finishes.

"To prevent noise from escaping," he says honestly. "Don't want you disturbing my neighbors."

She sucks in a sharp breath.

A fleeting smile teases at his lips, and he looks away again. "Shoes off." While she unlaces her boots, he adds, "Do you know any contraceptive spells?"

Her fingers still over the laces. _Gods_ what a question. It confirms her suspicions, though, that he intends to leave her imbued with his essence. And there again, a small flicker of doubt. What has she gotten herself into here? She glances up to see him watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She clears her throat. "Why would your celibate uncle think to teach his celibate apprentice anything like that?"

That draws a smirk out of him. "Point taken. It's fine, I know one. It's effective. We'll do it later."

She finally gets her boots off. He motions to the furs.

Now Rey _is_ nervous. She fumbles for the buttons on the back of her dress. Kylo is immediately at her side, drawing her fingers away.

"No," he says gently. "It's alright."

Okay…clothes on, then. He leads her to the bed-not-bed and pulls her down so that they're both sitting on the furs. It's surprisingly comfortable. He maneuvers them into the center of it, and they sit across from each other, knee-to-knee. He takes both her hands in his, lifting his gaze until it meets hers, and he holds her there with him.

It's like he's searching her _soul_ with that stare. Like he's looking for something.

"Kira," he says softly, "what we do tonight will alter your relationship with magic. Before this, you have known it as an acquaintance. A distant, if sometimes exacting friend who agrees to help you in exchange for your obedience. This is an effective arrangement. But tonight, you will take that acquaintance into your bed and make that friend your lover. From tonight it will be part of you. _In_ you. It will be y _ours_. It will always be there to assist you, demanding nothing but your trust in return. Do you understand?"

Rey draws a deep breath. "I think so."

Kylo speaks gently now. "Our chosen names protect us from unwanted magic. Our birth names have power — power that is unsafe in the hands of others. But for tonight to work, it's important that we keep no barriers between us, and invoke only each other's true self. Will you trust me with your real name? I will give you mine in return."

This is…a lot more intimate than she expected. No one has used her real name since Luke made her choose a new one. Kylo will hold power over her with it. He could use it against her. Use it to bind her. But then, she will be able to do the same to him. They do not know each other well enough for this kind of trust.

Still, she doesn't want to turn back now. She wants to _know_.

So she exhales shakily and says, "My name is Rey."

His lips turn in a brief, genuine smile. "That suits you far better than Kira. It feels natural."

"Hey, quid pro quo here," she insists, ignoring the way her cheeks warm with pleasure. "I gave you mine."

"It's Ben," he says softly.

 _Ben_. Yes, he's right. That feels natural. It settles into her mind like something familiar. Like she's always known he is Ben, and Kylo was merely fancy clothing he'd been wearing. Now she sees the naked him. The real him. She finds that her own mouth has tugged into a smile unwittingly.

His fingers trace patterns into her palm. Gentle, soothing. "Tell me about your parents."

"Is that really part of the ritual?"

"No," he admits. "But it works best if we establish trust."

"More than giving each other our names?" She tries to laugh, but it comes out a little breathless. "We have to actually bond?"

"Yes," he says seriously. "But if you're uncomfortable, you can turn back at any point."

Yeah right. Then she'll have given him her name for no reason, and there'll be this person running around the world with her name, a person with whom she has no relationship. No, she has to go onward.

"My parents were nobody," she says. "I didn't know them, really. They were drunkards, both of them, and they never wanted me around. I snuck in at night to sleep and snuck out again in the morning before they ever knew I was there. If they caught me, they beat me and threw me out of the window. The woman had a sister who cared for me when I was really little, but she died when I turned five. I didn't have a family at all."

Ben's eyes darken and his jaw tightens. He slides his fingertips along the length of her own fingers, both front and back, slow, calming strokes.

"Don't feel sorry for me," she warns him.

"You know that's an impossible request."

"I survived," says Rey. "That's all that mattered."

"Hm," he rumbles. "I suppose that's true. Where you came from is only important up to a point. Progress necessitates the death of the past."

She considers him. The sculpture of his face. The ever-present intensity in the way he regards her. His fingers explore her wrist now, easing up her forearms. "What about your parents?"

"You know about my mother," he says. "Growing up under the shadow of the High Mage was…difficult. Not in the way your childhood was difficult, of course. But she was busy. Too busy most of the time to help me understand what it meant to be able to feel _magic._ I just wanted her attention, and could rarely get it."

Rey can't even imagine what kind of responsibilities the High Mage would have tugging her away from her family every day. "The ballads about her putting down armies never talk about the boy waiting for her at home," she acknowledges.

Ben's brow lifts, his eyes rounding a little as if he is surprised she understands.

"Your father?" she urges, since he seems to be at a loss for what else to say.

He uncrosses his legs, putting the on either side of her so he can scoot closer, his hands transferring to her knees. "My father was my favorite person when I was little. He's an adventurer at heart. That's how he and my mother met. A king, not of Coruscant but another kingdom, employed an old wizard as his advisor. When the king's daughter got kidnapped, he expected the wizard to assist in her rescue, but the wizard was too old. So he, knowing my mother since she was little, asked her to take his place instead. In the meantime the king hired a number of adventurers, my father among them. They rescued the princess and got their reward, but my father and mother had developed a rapport, and when she came back to Coruscant, he came with her. They worked well together. So the two of them had more adventures. And after she became High Mage, and after I came along, he stopped venturing so far or so often."

Rey almost gets lost in the sing-song rhythm of his storytelling. "Do you have a relationship with him now?"

She is getting more comfortable with his hands now. They don't wander up her thighs like she'd feared. They stay on her knees, his thumbs rubbing idle circles there.

"Not much. After I went with Skywalker—"

"I know his name," she says, interrupting him. Organa hadn't used Luke's mage name with her, and she doesn't see why Ben should either, knowing he knows it too. "You can call him Luke."

He looks momentarily surprised, and then amused. "Of course you do. Alright, then. After I went with _Luke_ , my father and I lost touch. We haven't spent any amount of time together in years."

"I bet he misses you," she says softly.

Ben's shoulders give a tiny shrug. "I know I need to go home. I just don't know if I have the strength to do it. Turn around."

Surprised, she does, pivoting on the furs until her back is to him. His hands find her waist and he pulls her back until she is flush against his chest, bracketed by his knees.

This is a lot more bodily contact. She blushes, grateful that he can't see it. He bends his head to hers, grazing his cheek alongside her own.

"When did you start manifesting magic?" he asks, and now his voice rumbles against her back, thrumming though her ear. It's so dark and rich, like velvet. She decides right then that she loves his voice. His hands trail up her arms in the soothing strokes he'd used on her palms earlier.

It's an effective strategy, getting her used to so much of him being all over so much of her. The slow advances prevent her from panicking about the more intense activities ahead.

"Uhm...when I was nine or ten." Her voice drops to suit the quiet mood. "I was crying. I made a flower grow out of the cobblestones at my feet."

"A flower," he says with soft wonder. "What kind?"

"Foxglove."

"Have you made other flowers before?"

His fingers are at the buttons on her back now, deftly undoing each one in a slow descent, his breath on her neck, his lips _just_ grazing her shoulder.

"Yes," she admits, finding it a little harder to talk now, the way his hands part the heavy fabric of her dress, fingers meeting her thin chemise.

"When do the flowers come?"

"When I'm feeling really strongly about something."

"Have you ever tried making them intentionally?"

"Yes." She shivers as he drops the dress off her shoulders, pulling her arms through the sleeves so that it puddles at her waist.

His even, calm voice is tinged with knowing. "It doesn't work, does it?"

She stiffens, twisting back a bit so she can cast him a side glance. "How could you possibly know that?"

He smirks, his heavy, warm hands sliding around her waist to work on the laces of her front-tied corset. "It's just a theory — we'll know soon enough, but I think your innate magic might have an earth-element bend. Until you learn to let it free, you can't access it at will, but bits of it come to you when you need it. To comfort you when you're sad, for instance."

"Wow, how impressive," she scoffs. "I can make you a bouquet to cheer you up. Such an astounding gift. A real asset to my community."

He chuckles. "Be as sarcastic as you want. Earth magic is extremely powerful, and it's a lot deeper than flowers, Rey."

Gods, what it does to her when he utters her _name_ like that. The first time she's heard it from someone else's lips since she became a witch. Something inside her shudders and warms like cold hands beside a hearth fire.

"What about you?" she asks as he pulls the corset away and flings it somewhere. "What bend does your magic take?"

"Light," he says, wrapping his arm around her middle and pulling her tight to him as he leans back, lifting her so he can kick away her billowy dress down the rest of her length. With it gone, she sits only in her chemise and stockings. Setting her down again, his hands run over her stomach, coming to rest on her lower abdomen.

"Put your hands on mine," he instructs.

She does, amazed at how small they are splayed out against his. She's never thought of herself as having small hands before.

"Think of some enchantment you know," he murmurs, his chin resting on her shoulder, "it doesn't matter which. Don't say it aloud, but cast it in your mind. That will lend some of your magic to mine and make this more effective."

Rey scrambles for an enchantment, quickly thinking of the silly little one she puts on her clothes every morning to keep them from getting dusty. She is grateful to have nice clothes. Grateful Luke had provided them. For the first time in her life, she does not want to get them dirty. So she puts a warding enchantment on them every day. She chants the words of this in her mind now as Ben mutters a soft string of incantations she doesn't understand. Warmth spreads through her lower abdomen, like a glow she can feel but not see. When it fades, she feels a pulse of desire, like her body knows some danger has passed.

"You're protected," he whispers. She turns her head towards him, his warm breath on her cheek. He is being so gentle, so careful. Not really what she expected when Maz talked about sex magic the other day. Still, she isn't about to complain. She is still nervous, so this pace reassures her, and his touch comforts her more than she thinks it should. And besides, she doesn't really know what will happen after they're through, so the longer this takes, the better.

Their hands are still on her. She laces her fingers into his and leans back against him, feeling his heart pound beneath her.

"What language were you speaking?" she asks.

"I don't know. My own, I guess. The one that belongs to my magic. You'll find your own when you access your own well, too."

"Have you done this before?" Her voice is soft and a little shy now. "Helped someone find their magic?"

"No," he says, nuzzling into her hair. "Does that make you glad? Or nervous?"

"You seem to know what you're doing. So…glad, I guess."

He chuckles, a low thunder through her whole body. "Jealousy. Interesting."

Is she jealous? Maybe a little, she decides. Something inside her wants to believe that this tenderness is for _her_ , not just part of his usual game. "Maybe. I think I'm allowed, though. Every girl wants her first time to be exclusively about her, right?"

He tenses against her back. "Not your first time ever…being with a man?"

"I am, or was, the pupil of a dogmatically celibate wizard. How many times did you take someone to bed when you were his apprentice?"

"But I was his apprentice since childhood." He sounds so uncertain now. "You grew up on the streets. I assumed—"

"Assumed what?" She turns in his grasp so now she's kneeling between his legs, facing him. His face bears the look of a man who has definitely been rattled by unexpected news. "That I paid my way with my body?"

"No," he says, frowning.

"That I let someone take advantage of me?"

Here he hesitates. "You must have been incredibly vulnerable."

"But not an easy target. I killed the ones who wouldn't take my less fatal hints."

A brief look of shock flickers over that face of his, and then, unmistakeable intrigue. "Does Luke know you're a murderer?"

"No. Does he know you're one too?"

He smirks and doesn't bother to deny it. "I'm sure he suspects it now."

"We're bad wizards," she concludes.

That makes him laugh. "Wizards kill, when they have to. But you're right. We have killed in rage, haven't we? We aren't fit for their ways. Which is why we're going to set free what you've got trapped in here," he taps on her chest.

She wants to touch now. She wants to see what's going on underneath all his clothes. She does not want to be the only one sitting here in a state of almost total undress. She can feel his eyes dragging down her neckline to where the nipples are clearly pebbled beneath the flimsy fabric of her white chemise. No one has ever gotten this intimate a view of her, and she might as well be already naked now for how exposed she feels. Especially when he holds her torso in his hands and slides a big palm around her ribs to thumb over one of those hard nubs on her breast, and she almost jerks away for how sensitive it is. He does it again, and she gasps.

"You're turn," she breathes, her hands on him now, working whatever clasps and buttons she can find to free him of these disguising black raiments. He doesn't stop her, but he doesn't help her either, apparently mesmerized by the shape of her breasts barely concealed by untrustworthy fabric. He palms her gently, and she suddenly realizes how wet it is between her thighs. She unconsciously arches into his touch, wanting more even as it already feels like too much.

Finally, finally she has to push his arms away so he can thread them through the sleeves of his various layers, until he is only in the soft white linen shirt. He helps at last by shucking off his pants, and then strips off her stockings, and now they are equally revealed. She in her chemise, and he in his braies and undershirt. Only he doesn't stop there. The shirt comes of next, and she gets an eyeful of creamy marbled godliness, pale and speckled with a scattering of moles.

Rey gapes. She can't help herself. She's seen the occasional hairy brute without a shirt on, but never in this context, and never anyone who looks so goddamn perfect as he does. She wants to touch all of him. To see if his skin would be cold like stone, or warm.

It's dark outside now. The dusk has settled in earnest. Candlelight throws a sensual glow over them and gives his dark eyes a fiery glimmer as he kneels before her, and she before him.

"Rey," he says, and a breathtaking feeling swoops through her again. A pluck on the string of power. She bites her lip and makes herself look at his face.

"It's not technically necessary for the ritual, so you can say no if you're uncomfortable," he says, his words faltering slightly, "But... I'd really like to kiss you."

She swallows, her heart stuttering to a stall inside her. Her attention flits to that pillowy mouth of his. She nods. "Okay."

His hands are on her immediately, sliding up her ribcage. And she wants to touch him too, but she doesn't know where, or how to begin. He guides one of her hands to his chest and leaves it there while he returns to her, drawing her into him, tilting her chin. He leans in, but pauses before the touch.

He is so close, she can almost see herself reflected in the smoldering embers of his eyes. They're soft and wanting, and Rey knows she shouldn't get attached, but she can feel herself getting drawn helplessly into them. Into him. Then his lips find her, and the sensation is at first strange, and she wonders why it is that humans ever started putting their mouths together. But when his lips move against hers — _oh —_ that's why.

Suddenly she can't get enough, and her hands are gliding up his throat, finding his jaw, holding him to her so she get more, and taste more, and she knows she ought to breathe but she doesn't want to stop.

His mouth is open, so is hers, and his tongue licks into her, and she meets him. It's like jumping into a wildfire. Her body immediately ignites. His hands are roaming now, sliding down her back, squeezing her ass, cupping her breasts again, like he can't decide where he likes to leave them. She doesn't care. Everything feels messy and raw and _good_.

It's no wonder wizards forbid this because there is no controlling this emotion. It bursts in her in fizzy sparks, a feeling a lot like joy, but darker too somehow. Lust, maybe. _Desire_.

He falls back on the furs, tugging her with him, and still he's kissing her. It's like neither of them know how to stop, or maybe they just don't want to. She's kneeling beside him, over him, but he tugs one of her legs over his waist and now she's sitting on him. And there is something big and hard nudging at her backside. It breaks her focus for a second and their lips part with an obscenely wet sound as she lifts her head and looks at him.

He breathes heavily, scanning her face, brushing her hair back behind one ear. "Don't be afraid," he urges.

Easier said than done, maybe, because what rests against her back there is nothing she has any idea what to do with.

"It's not time yet," he says, reassuring.

She nods, glancing around, and startles because where once fine rugs covered the floor of Ben's tent, now everything is carpeted in a lush green layer of grass.

"Um," she says, motioning vaguely.

Ben sits up beneath her, looking over at the ground. His brow lifts in momentary bewilderment. The fields around the village aren't full and green like this. Some weedy patches grow, some lackluster, stringy grasses tramped by too many feet cover the ground, but this is…this is an emerald sea.

"Where did your rugs go?" Rey wonders. "Or our clothes?"

A tiny laugh chokes out of him. "I suspect they're under the grass."

"What? How?"

His hands are on her back again, pulling her into him so he can kiss the column of her throat. "Definitely earth magic," he hums into her skin. "Gods, I can't wait to see what you can do when you're free."

She's a little embarrassed about the grass, especially since he seems to think she did it, but his mouth on her neck quickly pulls her back under, into this moment.

"When —" she rattles breathlessly, "when does that happen?"

"Oh, still so nervous," he croons, paying particular attention to her collarbone. "It's okay. It's still not time. You'll know. And I'll take care of you. Don't worry."

Rey's head lolls back with the chills raking down her body at this touch. Is this how it was for him, too? Being touched for the first time. If the story is to be believed, his introduction to sorcery had been his first foray into sex as well. Knowing that makes her feel closer to him somehow. Like they aren't very different at all.

His hands are on her thighs now, pushing up under the linen of her chemise, climbing higher. He lifts his head from her neck, looking down at the skin his hands have exposed.

Her fingers cards into his hair, yanking it back so he is tipped up towards her. She kisses him again, needing the distraction if he is going to start touching her under her last bit of clothing.

He is. He does. He skates his hands right up her body, gathering the fabric with him, pulling it over her head. Now she is completely naked. But before the rush of embarrassment can overtake her, before she can fully realize that she is bared to him, he grabs her and crushes her to him in a fierce embrace. His hands don't roam and his eyes can't take her in because he surrounds her, holding on like she is a lifeline.

It's exactly what she needs. She hides in the crook of his neck and relishes in the astonishing pleasure of his skin against her skin. His chest against her chest.

In a movement she doesn't understand, he lays her down on the soft furs. The action makes her heart skip a beat, but he is right there with her, still shielding her, and now snatching her lips in his once more.

The kiss devours her senses. Their heady, mingled breaths shared between them, the taste of him, the hunger that stirs in her belly. It makes her eager for his wandering hands now. Makes her release a soft sound when he rolls a bare nipple between his fingers, and another when his hand roams lower, gliding past her navel.

Rey didn't know what to expect, what it would feel like, having someone touch her there. She couldn't have anticipated the wild rush that steals the breath from her lungs when he skirts a single finger through her very wet folds.

"Ben," she gasps, and he shudders in pleasure, rumbling an approving noise. He likes it when she says his name, she realizes.

He finally pulls away and turns his head to consume her body with his eyes, one hand still firmly cupping her sex while a finger gently pets through her. He makes a soft groan of appreciation, shifting down so he can trail kisses down her sternum.

He briefly leaves her soaked center to hook an arm under one of her legs and bend it at the knee, propping it up and off to the side. Now she is very open, and closes her eyes before she can see what reaction he has to the sight of her so wantonly splayed.

But Ben seems too distracted to take her in like that. A moment later his tongue licks over one of her nipples, and she whimpers a soft cry.

"Do you know what we're doing here, Rey?" he asks.

Oh, he wants to talk now. She doesn't open her eyes, too focused on the return of his hand to her where she wants him. He continues running his finger through her, sometimes pausing to circle a place that made her back arch.

"We're getting you ready. Preparing the way. But there is power in this too. Can you feel it building?"

She can definitely feel something building. She needs more from him, though. Urgency creeps into her blood as she bucks up against hand.

His gentle swipes are making a noise so wet and lewd that Rey feels her face flush. Embarrassing as it is, however, it also inflames her desire. And it feels so good, having him play around like that. When he breaches her, when that same long, thick finger slides into her in one toe-curling pass, she lets out a lusty moan in a gush of air and wetness.

Rey did not know this is a thing people do. She thought sex was some kind of brutally quick performance, jam it in, give it a few good pumps, dump and go. She didn't know people use their fingers. She didn't know it could feel like this at all.

It doesn't hurt to have him buried to the knuckle. Not at all. It does feel strange, but wonderful too, and when he wriggles inside her, rocking it in and out as he crooks it — oh, that is perfect.

She is glad of his noise-proofing spell now, because she's never heard the kinds of sounds coming out of her now.

Ben seems to crave them. When she peels her eyes open, he is watching her, his onyx irises blacker and hungrier than ever.

"Focus on this phrase," he tells her in a low, ragged voice. " _I am a daughter of power. I will heed my own._ "

Rey nods, struggling to hold onto the words with her spinning mind.

"Say them," he demands.

Rey tries. "I am a — daughter — of power..."

In any other circumstance less consuming than this, she'd probably feel some kind of way about calling herself a daughter of anything. But this is not that moment.

"Repeat it in your mind," he says, tilting the heel of his palm into her apex, grinding against it as his finger swirls inside her, stretching her subtly. Meanwhile his head bends to her breast, and he pulls one tit into his mouth, sucking hard.

Rey cries out, the words slipping away before she manages to find them again and march them through her increasingly wild mind.

He presses a second finger into her, and Rey is worked up enough to welcome it. She throws her head to the side, flowers spotting before her vision. —Wait, no, they are real. She arches under him and stares with wide, glassy eyes at the garden that has sprung up in his tent, flowers of immense variety blooming and unfurling everywhere. Colors filled the space in wonderful chaos.

But she loses track of them a moment later because her body is suddenly tumbling over some threshold, waves of pleasure so strong she can't breathe ripping through her. She lets loose a cry, her cunt throbbing around his fingers in rhythmic pulses. His movements slow to a gentle pet, his mouth parting from her breast with a grin.

"Very good, Rey."


	4. Chapter 4

She stares up at the ceiling of his tent and pants, pulses still thrumming through her in delicious spasms. She's never felt anything like that before. Her mind swirls, blank and open.

"Now?" she asks him, not nearly as afraid as before.

"Almost," he says, moving his hand away to crawl up her and kiss her once. It's an aggressive, exacting kiss that demands her full attention.

"Gods," he huffs, his eyes closing as he rests against her forehead, "you're addicting. Your taste. Your sounds. Your mouth."

She reaches for his hair, but he's already gone, licking a hungry trail down her body until he settles between her legs. She props herself up on her elbows to see, because what the hell is he doing?

With a wicked glint in his eye and a grin, he wraps his arms around her legs and pushes them up, holding them against his shoulders. While she watches, he licks a long stripe right through her seam.

All the air in her lungs rushes out of her in a startled moan, her arms losing strength so she falls back on the furs. _Fuck_ , that feels... otherworldly. His tongue is scorching hot, and the subtle rasp of his tastebuds against her clit draw needy, broken sounds from between her lips.

He delves into her, pressing his tongue as far into her as he can, curling it against her, eliciting another unrestrained moan. It undulates within her tight passage before he replaces it with a single finger, moving that merciless mouth of his to suck at her clit instead, deep pleased rumbles vibrating through him and against her, like he's enjoying himself as much as she is. Rey is consumed in fire, and she burns alive until her body finally gives and another sweet rush of unbearable bliss seizes her. She jerks beneath him, legs trembling, chest heaving as she claws for an escape she doesn't want. He works her through it, through those fierce waves of pleasure, and when he lifts his head and rests his chin on her pelvis, looking up at her with a boyish smile, she blushes at how his face _glistens_ with her fluids.

He wipes himself dry on her inner thigh, his light stubble raking against the skin. With a tender kiss placed there, he shoulders her legs back up into place, bent and knocked to the side, and then crawls up her until they are face to face once more.

"Are you ready, Rey?" he asks, palming gently over her plumped nipples again, his eyes half-hooded and smoldering with affectionate heat. "It's time."

She nods, dizzily realizing now that he's even more beautiful than she already thought. She traces the lines of his face, grazing over his lips with her thumb. He chases her touch, nibbling the pad of her finger.

"I trust you," she says softly.

Because if he's proven anything here, it's that he's got her needs fully in mind, and he won't let this first time be traumatic.

He swipes his tongue over her thumb again, nipping down into her palm where he presses a kiss. Meanwhile his hands take turns operating below, sliding off his braies and gathering her wetness on his fingers, applying it to himself. She's glad his body caging her in blocks her from seeing. She doesn't want to see. She doesn't want to get nervous again. Right now she isn't nervous at all, just blissed out.

"You're dong so well," he rumbles, moving from her hand to her lips. He tastes a little musky, a little salty. She realizes it's her, still lingering on his tongue. "I can feel your magic bursting at the seams."

More like leaking out everywhere, if the riot of flowering bushes now populating the tent are any indication. Ben doesn't seem to have noticed them yet. She doesn't point them out.

"Ben," she sighs wantonly, savoring the roll of his name through her mouth, the way she feels that tug when she says it, like she's got some thread in him to do with as she pleases.

Warmth spreads through those dark eyes again. He's aligned himself against her entrance, and she can feel the pressure of him there, moving forward, trying to get in.

"Breathe," he tells her as he pushes a little harder. Suddenly her body gives, allowing him to pierce her.

He must know she needs the reminder because all of the sudden Rey _can't_ breathe. He's — he's huge. Every slow inch stretches her more, and while it doesn't hurt, exactly, it's much, much more than she anticipated. It's a feeling her body doesn't know what to do with. A sense of panic claws its way through her.

"Rey," he invokes softly, his voice dark and low and gentle, "you're alright."

" _Ah —_ it's not — it won't — fit," she whimpers, instinctually trying to shift away from this feeling, but that only pushes him in another inch further, tearing a gasp out of her lungs.

"Do you want me to stop?" The way he asks it, she thinks he would, if she said yes.

But she shakes her head, because...well she doesn't really know why. The panic is at war with blazing _need_ , and she is caught between wanting more and wanting less.

His thumb strokes the side of her face in soft, soothing touches. "It will fit," he promises. "We were made for this." He gives a shallow thrust, abruptly gaining another few inches. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut. "We are beings of light and dark. There is power in us."

He keeps going, and she thinks he'll split her in two with how much of him there is. But even though her body is distressed by what's happening, his words speak to something else inside her. Something that stirs into awareness. Her eyes flutter open again and catch on his.

"This power belongs to you," he says, taking the last of her, his pelvis coming to rest flush against hers at last. "It isn't found in books, or academies, or in the favor of gods. It's yours alone, Rey. Do you feel it?"

Every time he says her name she wants to melt into the sound, wants to hear him say it over and over. She tries to keep hold of his question. She can feel him, all of him, wedged into a place so dark and tight and deep, she isn't sure he'll ever come out again. She can feel the tip of him, the arrowhead at the end of his shaft, buried at the bottom of her depths. She can feel how wide and stretched she is, flayed open on him.

But more than the physical sensation of being thusly impaled, she can feel something else, too. Like the rush of wind through tall grasses. Like sunlight glowing behind green leaves.

"I feel it," she tells him, her words shivering out of her in a whisper.

He slides one of his hands into hers, lacing their fingers together by her head, and kisses her again. The sunlight inside her grows brighter, and she isn't sure if its his or hers, because its a veritable forest inside her head now, golden shafts illuminating the gloom. Like a door is creaking open and she can glimpse a whole world beyond it. _Magic_.

But then he starts to move, and all the thoughts flood away from her because _oh!_ Somehow that's…that's more intense than his initial entry. He draws out, starts back in in a long slide.

"Ben," she whimpers.

"Tell me," he urges, and it sounds like it's hard for him to breathe now too.

"It's too much…I can't," tears are pricking at the corner of her eyes, and she doesn't fully understand them because it doesn't hurt, but emotions are surging anyway.

He stills again, and his expression his incredibly gentle. "You can. You are. Rey, you're taking it beautifully. Your body knows what to do, and so does your power. You're trying to hang on to control. Release them. Let go."

"I don't know how."

"Focus on me," he says. She does, and again she draws unmistakeable comfort in the warmth of his stare. He presses a palm down on the flat of her stomach, below her navel. The pressure reminds her of how much of him is nestled within her. "Focus on the flow of energy. The web woven between all living things. You recognize this." He's moving again, drawing out slowly, making her hiss. "It's a rhythm you already know. Something you're part of. The push—" he slides back in, "—and the pull," he eases out, "of existence. It's life." _I_ _n_. "And death." _O_ _ut_. "Burial." _In._ "And birth." _Out._

She matches her breathing with his slow strokes, listening, feeling. The passes are easier now, becoming slick, gliding drags, though still slow and deliberate. Rey is pulled into them like the undertow of waves. Into the way her body eagerly receives him when he enters, gripping greedily like it wants to milk him dry, and the way it clings to him, reluctant to let go, when he draws back.

"Inhale." _In_. "Exhale." _Out_.

Calm washes through her. Immense pleasure too, bigger than what he'd done before with his fingers. With his mouth. This satisfies a deeper burn, produces a more profound sensation of arousal. It feels exquisitely good.

There is intimacy as well. Every bit of Ben surrounding her, engulfing her. It's just the two of them filling her awareness. His power swirls into her. She knows he is the light, now. She the growing things, and he the illumination. She can feel his glow spreading through her chest, a connection fusing together in the blazing forge of this desire. Their energy mixes joyfully, circling like starlings in euphoric flight.

The garden of Ben's tent is becoming choked with greenery now. More than just flowers spring up everywhere, though they still sprout in wild abundance, filling the air with fresh floral scent. Vines grow too, snaking up his shelves, climbing the canvas walls, overtaking his workbench. Nothing touches their bed of furs, but everything else becomes swallowed in green.

Rey barely takes note of them. She is utterly lost in Ben. In the rise and fall of him, the stretch, the fullness, the give and take of this primal, ancient rhythm he invokes with every powerful stroke. Blinding spasms of pleasure ripple through her core, the wet sounds of his grinding filling the thicket of growing things. Her hands are everywhere, greedily exploring his musculature, fisting into his hair, pulling him in so she can kiss him ferociously. A pained little noise escapes him.

"Ben," she breathes, soaked in him, in his name, in his cock pushing steadily into her. Their magic flares white hot. She can feel cool mountain breezes, can hear the murmur of ocean waves, can smell the dust of distant sands. The whole world feels one touch away, like she only needs to think it, and a door will fling open for her to walk through.

"I feel it too," he whispers, a little brokenly. He is trembling.

Rey's body begins to hunt more of his treatment, moving with him, chasing the pleasure he provides. His breathing hitches and he lowers his head to hide in her neck, his thrusts coming quicker now, harder, forcing plaintive little sounds out of her with every blow.

Life. Death. Burial. Birth. Push. Pull. Inhale. Exhale.

 _We are children of power,_ she chants in her mind, too tethered to Ben to separate him from her, even in her own lust-drunk mind. _We will heed our own._

"Rey," Ben chokes, gasping against her skin like he's in crisis. His huge shoulders roll above her.

It is fire and ice within them, outside them, consuming and burning and wicking them away into nothing. It is sunlight blazing through dense trees where they lie on a blanket in the forest. Or moonlight glistening off their sweat-slick bodies as it slants through the window of a palace, bathing the bed they lie on in soft silvery glow. They are _everywhere_ and _nowhere_ at once.

Rey can see splinters of images cutting through her mind with each snap of his hips, jagged shards of things that are maybe past or maybe future. She cradles his head against her and pants as her climax races just ahead of her, just out of reach. She can feel his magic like liquid light in her veins, drawing out her own, setting her aflame.

"More," she pleads — the only word she can manage.

He snarls a deep, bestial sound and lifts out of hiding, hooking a beefy arm beneath one of her legs, throwing it over his shoulder as he adjusts forward. This new angle makes Rey cry out a string of expletives and curses that burn up harmlessly under the blaze of their surging magic. He is _so deep_ now, and driving into her _hard_ , and she forgets all about monitoring her breath or her intentions, merely clinging to him lest she be torn apart.

They break together.

It's a blinding flash, a gush of magic that races out of them with a wave of agonizing rapture. Rey's orgasm takes her at the same time Ben wrenches out a strangled sound and buries himself to the hilt. He pulls her to him and hugs her tight to his shaking body as they both shudder and gasp and he paints her insides in copious spurts of warmth.

Rey's whole soul blows wide open. Previous doubts or inhibitions burn away. The innate potential that's always been inside her awakens with the boom of an earthquake. It's as if galaxies of possibilities exist in her, and with a single pluck of her fingers she might send any one of them spinning on a new axis, or gather them into her will and make the universe bend the knee to _her_.

She's never felt this powerful. Like a goddess.

The nervous, exasperated apprentice of a curmudgeonly old school wizard is gone. In her place lays a woman who came into the world endowed with the power to shake the foundations of the earth. Her gifts can't be found in any book. She can feel her roots buried deep into the fabric of magic, into the binding glue that holds the world together.

Clutching this ruined man to her, feeling him pulse and twitch within her darkest chambers, it does something too. She feels possessive. Protective. He is _hers._

As the throbbing aftershocks of her orgasm fade and her mind comes back into focus, she finds herself blinking up at the gnarled green thicket that surrounds them. It confuses her. Did they go somewhere else? Accidentally slip through one of those open doors she'd seen?

No…the longer she stares, the more she realizes they're still in Ben's tent. The scaffolding of branches above her take the vaulted shape of his canvas roof. She laughs.

Ben jolts, a startled groan huffing out of him as her laughter inadvertently contracts her other muscles as well. It reminds her that he's very much still in there. She gives another test squeeze, finding she can grip him rather efficiently. It rouses him out of his stupor and he winces.

"Fuck, that's — you're already so tight, baby, I don't —"

"Sorry," she laughs, letting go of those delightfully strong muscles of which she is newly aware.

He relaxes, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "How do you feel?"

She searches herself, the raw magic that burst into existence, the omnipotence she feels. Her own. "Different," she says. "More like me than I've ever known." Her fingers trace his jaw. "I feel you, too."

He looks a little dazed himself. "Yeah, I can also feel you. It's…unexpected."

Their magic still flows around them like a river too long dammed back, now filling the valley it ran through long before, taking out everything in its path. She has the sense that if they uttered a single word of any spell right now, the whole world would crumble at their feet. It's intoxicating.

"It's not normal to be this connected?" she asks, assessing the lingering astonishment on his face.

He shakes his head, wincing again as he eases out of her at last. A rush of warmth follows him, pooling between her legs. He sits on the edge of the furs, and Rey can't help thrilling a little at the way his softening member glistens with her juices. "No. I've never felt anything like this before. It feels like my magic knows yours. Like we've met before."

He looks around at the greenery that has overtaken them, apparently for the first time. His bafflement grows and grows. When he glances back at her, though, he is momentarily distracted by the sight of her naked form languidly sprawled there where he'd left her. His expression softens.

"You're beautiful," he tells her.

She blushes, sitting up quickly so she can kiss him, because how can she not after a comment like that? She doesn't know if this is protocol. If the ritual is over and therefore any pretense of intimacy or romance is ended, but she can't help herself. She still feels his magic glowing inside her, harmonizing with her own, and with so much affection in his warm stare, she has to show him.

He doesn't stop her. In fact he cradles her face and kisses her in return, his lips gentle and tender as they capture her, taking as much as she is willing to give.

"I don't know what this is," he says softly when they break apart. "And you need no further instruction from me, your magic will tell you all you need to know, so you will do what you feel you must, but…I have this feeling…I'm not sure I can let you go."

She smiles, twining her fingers into his hair, tracing a thumb over the shell of his ear. "I have that feeling too, like I'm not going anywhere."

He looks relieved. Relieved enough to kiss her again once, quickly, and then issue a soft, breathless laugh before he looks around again. "I wonder if you can ask your children to let go of my things."

"Leave them for now," she says warmly. "It's nice in here. I'll let you have your stuff back when you need it."

She doesn't doubt that she can. One touch and all these lovely green plants would unwind themselves, would whither and decompose as quickly as she asked. She can't explain how she knows that this is something she can do, she just _knows_. Ben lays down beside her, pulling her into his arms so that she rests across his chest. She can hear his heart pounding a slow, powerful cadence beneath her head. It soothes her. He cards fingers idly through her hair while their bodies cool.

Rey doesn't remember dozing off, but suddenly she jumps, jarred into sudden awareness when a surprised voice breaks through their comfortable world. The male speaker issues a series of swears about a _bloody ghost forest_ trying to eat his tent. Beneath her, Ben stiffens, and she lifts her head to see that he too woke.

"I thought you said you put a noise spell on this place," she whispers.

He chuckles. "I did. No sounds can escape it, but they're free to come in. And anyway, you're worried about noise? I thought your little garden show was confined to _us_."

She blinks, realizing what he means. What the man outside is still swearing about. She scrambles for her chemise, throwing it over her before trying to figure out which plants have covered her other clothes. Ben goes digging too, pulling up handfuls of grass and flowers and leaves.

When they're dressed again they stumble out of his tent and come face to face with a field of chest-high grass stretching as far as the eye can see, mature trees scattered over the field, the tops of ivy-covered tents peeking out above the sea of emerald green.

The village hasn't been spared either, it seems. The buildings are covered in vines and ivy, too, only the windows and doors visible where once lumber and brick composed their facades. Huge trees have sprung up in the middle of roadways and market squares.

"Oh gods," Rey gasps, mortified.

But Ben seems deeply pleased, maybe even proud, if the bastard smirk that creeps over his lips is any indication. "And I thought it was bad when I set fire to the curtains my first go-around."

"Is this going to happen every time?"

His hands find her hips, turning her to face him. He tilts her chin towards him, and there is something in his gaze just before he bends to kiss her that makes her breath catch. Something adoring and heated and possessive. "I have no idea, but I intend to find out."

* * *

Luke frowns at the riotous, overgrown flora choking the entire village.

"I guess it can't be sinister," he grumbles. "Why would a dark mage do something like this?"

Leia glances at her brother with an amused smile. "My thoughts exactly. It isn't harming anyone. It's confusing, certainly, but the effect is rather pretty. The place could've used a little more greenery."

"A little," he scoffs. "It's like the whole village got forgotten for a hundred years and now we're occupying it again, sharing it with the wildlife."

Birds flit among all the new trees and vines, insects buzz amongst the flowers. Rabbits disappear into new thickets. Leia even spies a fox creeping curiously through a back alley tunneled with arching vines.

The festival is technically over today, but everyone stands around, baffled as to how to clean up when they've awoken to find everything consumed by plants.

"I don't know why someone would do this," Leia laughs, "but it definitely doesn't feel malicious. Maybe it's even an accident."

"A loss of control on this level is..." Luke frowns again.

Always so dour, her twin. Leia sighs. "It's fine. I'm sure the mage responsible will clean it up when they realize what happened."

"Perhaps they will, but to do something like this requires immense power, Leia. More than you or I possess. It doesn't worry you?"

"Not yet it doesn't. We'll see what happens. Perhaps we'll learn the identity of the gardener and then we'll be able to discern motives."

Luke doesn't seem all that pleased, but he says nothing.

Leia gives him a curious look. "Where's your apprentice?"

"She left," he grumps. "Willful girl. She left me spell note thanking me for my instruction, patience, and time, but she felt she ought to explore other disciplines. Ungrateful. I saved her from the gallows, you know."

"That doesn't mean you own her," Leia says softly, thinking of the girl. "She may find her way back to you eventually."

"No doubt you put this idea in her head."

"I didn't put anything there. Trust me, she already had the notion when I spoke to her. You're not a failure of a teacher, Luke, just because two of your apprentices have chosen other ways."

He grunts unhappily, and she can see the flicker of doubt in his eye. She pats him. "Your order is waning, brother. It might be time to adapt."

"I don't know if I can," he admits. "I'll leave that to the young."

Maz comes out of her tent, the true entrance this time. She gives Leia a look that makes the mage's heart drop.

"Pretty as this is, we have uglier things to speak of," the old woman proclaims. "The rumors are true. I have seen it. The dark wizards have crossed the sea and landed. They are coming."

Leia grimaces, and then sighs. "Well, brother, you may yet see your two apprentices again. We'll need every hand, staff, and wand to help us face Palpatine and his minion."

Luke shoots her a look. "You really think your son will come? He'll be up against some of his own. Including _her_ , if the rumors are true."

"He'll come," Leia says with quiet confidence. Then, thoughtfully and without quite knowing why she ought to say it, she adds, "they both will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun DUN! 
> 
> Lmao. I'm leaving it this way in case I want to keep going with the story later. Right now I have ideas for where it could go, but my plate is a bit too full to see it through at the moment.
> 
> Let me know what you thought! I love comments. Also, come find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/little_womp_rat)


End file.
